Building on the Foundation

  A brother in the faith recently sent me a document called “Passover Observance History,” which is the appendix to a book recently released by a pastor in the United Church of God. While I haven’t read the rest of the work, it seems (based on the title) to be a harmony of the Gospels and not specifically about Passover. But this appendix makes claims about the history of Passover observance which deserve careful, Berean-style scrutiny. Here’s a summary of its five major claims: That Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread began as two separate feasts, That the Jews drifted in their understanding of Passover, moved the Passover sacrifice from the beginning of Nisan 14 to the end, and merged the two feasts into one, That this happened because the Jews briefly abandoned the Scriptural practice of beginning days at sunset and copied the Egyptian custom of beginning days at sunrise, That it wasn’t possible to kill all the Passover lambs at the temple, And that there were therefore t...

  If you’ve spent time around children, you’ve probably noticed how creative and imaginative they can be. This is often wonderful, but sometimes it isn’t. Tell your child to do something he or she doesn’t want to do, and that child can invent the silliest excuses you’ve ever heard to try to convince you that your instructions are impossible to obey. The child might even pretend he didn’t hear you, or that he didn’t understand what you said. When it comes to our Creator, it’s in our nature to morph into those same small children. When God, in His written Word, tells us to do something, it’s our human nature to invent the most outlandish excuses to try to weasel our way out of obedience. “Why, that’s so unreasonable! Why, that’s just impossible! Surely God didn’t actually mean that!” It’s in our nature to pretend we can’t understand our Creator’s plainest and simplest instructions. This carnal nature, of course, is exactly what God put us here to overcome. Now, being adults, we ten...